Shaka Brudda and Aloha

 

When I told people in the very beginning of August that I was going to Hawaii, their first reaction was to that I surely was going on vacation, and lucky me. I certainly took the time off, as in vacation, and I was certainly going to a paradise on earth known as Waikiki Beach

 and its even more beautiful environs,

which sure as sand sounds vacation-y. But, the purpose had nothing whatsoever to do with vacation.

My mother's eldest sister retired in Honolulu some 27 years ago, when she wasn't much older than I am today. Then she was able to get around without needing anything more than a nice location and some newly made friends and a little bit of money she inherited back east from someone, who knows who. And time on the beautiful Island passed. The Island stayed as it was. She did not. She got old. And being without any family became an issue. She never said it was, but calls to her youngest, still living sister, and my cousin and I, her only direct relatives at this point (lots of  other cousins of hers but no longer really in the picture so many years hence), revealed a subtext of health issues, and money problems, although with a small pension and social security, she should have enough to sustain her reasonably comfortably.

I was there two years ago for business and visited her. She had aged, but she still seemed all right in her senior residence, going to sing-a-longs on Fridays, and puttering around her cluttered apartment. I knew then that there was the beginning of a hoarding issue, but it seemed harmless enough at that point.

Then a neighbor of my aunt, called my aunt's sister in New York. You know it's got to be trouble when the intervenor is older than the person she is calling about. My aunt is 86. The neighbor is 92 and though unable to walk without a chair is still keeping up her apartment and dresses like Donna Reed of the great grandmother set. She doesn't go very many places, but she sure looks like she could go out and paint the town. Anyway, this lovely lady, a caring friend of my aunt's, let us know that things were deteriorating, both in her health and financial circumstances. Mostly, it was the financial she was pointing out because my dear aunt has been asking for loans. She tries to pay them back but the requests have come more frequently, and the reason for the problem, although having many explanations from my aunt, all seem to be outrightly bogus. They are old themselves, and there is a limit to their help.

So, I made the reservations (thank you Expedia) and got a pretty good deal given the locale to which I would going to resolve as best as I could the family crisis and its unnatural cost in these gas high and hotel high days for August 5 to 12, taking a red eye back, to preserve that very last day for any emergency appointments. My cousin in New York decided that it was as much her responsibility as mine, although frankly, the extra miles and extra cost really made it less hers than mine, in my view. I was closer, just 3,000 miles across the Pacific. But she insisted (God Bless her, for it was good to have her with me) and came to meet me a day before my trip and joined me bound for the land of the hula and a cold call upon our dear Aunt. We did not want her to try to shove anything under the carpet.

So off Hawaiian Airlines we came and dropped our stuff at the Aloha Surf and Spa,

 

 off the main beach (less expensive) but with a nice view of the Ala Wai Canal and the cloud moody mountains beyond it from the lanai.

 

 

 And made a b-line for our ailing aunt's place.

In truth she couldn't begin to hide her situation, even if she had a day or two of preparation. It was that bad. She and her apartment had decayed in the two years since I had seen her and her apartment. . .well, it was not just cluttered any longer, it was unbearable in heat and smell. No longer could she easily take care of herself and clearly she wasn't getting any help from anyone and clearly, even more, though she told us she was seeingdoctors, she hadn't seen one (as I confirmed with one) in three years, a year before I last saw her. She received us happily, but as if we had just taken a cross town bus rather than a hefty flight. She hadn't seen my cousin in ten years. We had our work cut out for us.

The next day we talked to a lawyer. The same day we called the Public Guardian and Adult Protective Services to consider our options. We also called a couple of those privately run social service entities that are there to help folks just like ourselves, the family of elders who don't live nearby. By Thursday, we had someone set to meet with her on Saturday afternoon. By Saturday afternoon, we had paid for an assessment and arranged that she be taken to a doctor about her edemic legs and feet--for my aunt seemed cooperative in her liking for the woman. We also had a state social worker involved, a nice but bulldozing lady, who also met with my aunt the Tuesday just before we left. Things almost fell apart again by the time we got back on Wednesday after the red eye, with the state social worker trying to subsume the efforts of the paid social worker by interposing a less well paid former nurse (in the Phillipines), that neither my cousin or I or my aunt had met. It wasn't that we were necessarily against her, but we had no prior visual of her and who was she? As my cousin wended her way back on the nightmare flight to New York (thunder showers meant that her plane circled for nearly two hours over JFK), I had to prevent the paid social worker from bowing out and keep the state one from mucking things up. I think I succeeded, but I won't really know till next week, if my aunt gets to the doctor in fact and in truth, rather than in theory.

In between trying to set these things into motion, we went to a sing a long and were the center of attention for the lovely residents who meet regularly on the fourth floor recreation area. One made leis for us, one material, one out of kukui nuts. We made sure we wore them when we visited again. We brought food for our aunt for lunch and dinner every day, and she seemed to revel in the attention, in her quiet implicit way that I remembered from my childhood.

And in between, yes, I guess, we vacationed a bit. And spent a great deal of that bit in the ubiquitous ABC Stores buying this or that my aunt or we needed, as well as at the Ala Moana Mall, which has EVERY store known to commercial man and woman. And we saw the naturethat makes these tropical islands so enticing, visiting Waimea Bay and the still raw and dangerous Sunset Beach,

 

where no one in his or her right mind would actually swim, given the currents, and Kailua, where Obama was also treading water. We bought pineapple at the Dole Plantation and had the requisite pineapple ice cream cone, a lovely but sticky little sweet. We learned what red dirt really is, the result of volcano ash and iron that makes the ground this incredible deep bright red, not unlike the color of the taut bodies of the surfer natives. We loved the little showers that come at a moment and then dissipate as quickly, the perfeft and timely spritz for our short clad selves. We noticed the chasm between the beautiful hotels on the beach and the run down apartments just blocks away. We decided it was a nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live there. Although we'll miss Spotz and Harvey, our temporary pigeon pets, eating muffin bits on the lanai every morning with the red headed sparrows. We always shared our continental breakfast with others.

We tried to hang loose in a small family crisis. I guess Hawaii isn't a bad place to have one.

I have been watching a DVD of Hawaii Five-O, since I got back, to see if I recognize anything. Ok, brudda, aloha.